Longtime Disney animator Ollie Johnston, the last surviving member of the "Nine Old Men" cadre responsible for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty and more decades' worth of classics, died of natural causes Tuesday in Washington. He was 95. Johnson cut his teeth on Disney short films before moving on to features, earning acclaim with colleagues whom Walt Disney reportedly dubbed the "Nine Old Men" as a play on the FDR-era Supreme Court. He later won the National Medal of Arts for his work, which included everything from Pinocchio's nose growing to the penguins serving Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Johnston's influence was powerful among generations who followed, Beauty and the Beast animator Glen Keane told the LA Times. "In Ollie's scenes, all the changes of emotion took place through subtle expressions of the character's eyes and the mouth and hands. ... Ollie's drawings looked as if his pencil had just kissed the paper to coax the characters out. Ollie really felt with his characters: His animation wasn't an intellectual thing, it came from something inside of him." [LAT]